John Müller
That’s the kind of cool stuff we do at ING
GOTO Amsterdam is the place to be for developers, software architects and engineers who want to hear about the very latest trends and advancements in software development, data and analytics from industry experts. One of those experts is John Müller, ING’s Global Head of IT Analytics Engineering.
‘A Tale of Two Clouds: Analytics Platforms at ING’ is the title of John’s presentation. “For a long time, ING was fairly reluctant to use the public cloud for analytics platforms,” says John. “That’s understandable, because security is very important for a bank and we wanted to be sure that our data would be – and remain – in safe hands. We started using Google Cloud in 2022. In my presentation at GOTO, I've shared details of our experiences, challenges and lessons learned while working in two clouds.”
At that time ING was not yet fully transitioned to the public cloud. “Besides Google Cloud, we also had a private cloud based at our own data centres. We’ve been working with this for much longer, so we’re using the two clouds in parallel. That’s pretty unusual; most companies move everything to the public cloud. During my presentation, I will also explain why we haven’t done that, and which specific challenges but also advantages are associated with working in two clouds.”
Sometimes we build things ourselves and sometimes we wait for Google
“As a taster of what I will discuss, sometimes the private cloud offers the best and quickest solution, such as a specific feature for an internal application. We can build this ourselves quickly and efficiently, without having to wait for the public cloud to offer an option. But if we want to use a chatbot based on artificial intelligence, for example, it doesn’t make sense to build it all ourselves. In that case, we’ll wait until a vendor like Google Cloud integrates it into their offering.”
The only way to make progress is to dare to try things
“Keeping two separate clouds up and running requires quite a bit of effort from your teams. You really need to have people who can work with both clouds. At the same time, it’s a nice challenge. We’re all very open to new tech frameworks; we enjoy trying and testing them to figure out how they can work best for ING. In fact, that might be the biggest lesson learned over the past few years: don’t be afraid – the only way to make progress is to dare to try things. And with that attitude, we’re doing a lot of cool stuff at ING.”
Are you interested to watch his talk? Watch his story on GOTO.
About John:
John started at ING as a data engineer just over ten years ago. He subsequently worked as a product owner in several squads, an engineering manager for data engineers and a data analytics platforms lead. He has been Global Head of IT Analytics Engineering since mid-2022.
As a father of two children, he works four days a week and spends the other days with his family: “I see it as a major plus that you can do that at ING, even if you’re in a senior management position.” In terms of sport, John is passionate about basketball.